Cultural Counsel is a New York-based consultancy focused on communications, strategic partnerships, and the development of public programming in the worlds of contemporary art, design, and architecture.

Through our valued relationships with artists, writers, curators, patrons, and creative professionals, we facilitate significant contributions to the cultural dialogue.

Communications is at the core of Cultural Counsel, but our vision is to catalyze something greater. The firm’s understanding of these specialized fields, as well as the worlds of fashion, hospitality, and real-estate development, allows us to promote projects to the public with a refined sense of context, and to facilitate seamless collaborations among an international clientele.

For its summer 2019 season, MOCAD presents four new exhibitions: KAWS: ALONE AGAIN, a solo exhibition of sculpture and paintings by the Brooklyn-based artist KAWS; Fast Eddie: New Paintings, a solo exhibition of the work of Eddie Martinez; Nicholas Lobo: Wellness Center, a site-specific solo exhibition in the Mike Kelley Mobile Homestead; and Unboxing: Doublespeak, a series of film and video installations featuring the work of Bailey Scieszka, Mary Helena Clark, Laure Prouvost, and Helina Metaferia.

Gretchen Bender: So Much Deathless presented by Red Bull Arts New York is the first posthumous retrospective of the life and work of the influential, multi-disciplinary artist. It opened to the public on March 6, 2019, remaining on view through July 28. The ambitious exhibition returns the spotlight to one of contemporary art’s most prescient figures, detailing her historic importance and contemporary relevance.

In working with time-based media conservator Maurice Schechter, the exhibition includes newly digitized works, such as Reality Fever, which hasn’t been seen since Bender’s first solo exhibition at the artist-run gallery Nature Morte in 1983; Flash Art (1987), her complex feminist engagement with women’s ability to self-fashion their image within the context of misogyny; and her master work Total Recall (1987), which has been remastered for its most historically faithful posthumous presentation to date. Installations such as Wild Dead 1-3 (1984), one of the artist’s earliest multi-monitor experiments, and Aggressive Witness – Active Participant (1990), a 12-monitor installation originally commissioned by the Wexner Center, have also been discovered in the archive, remastered, and restaged with the help of historical documentation for the first time in decades since their initial showings.

Cultural Counsel provided support with the exhibition's public programs which included an excerpt and reprisal of Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Company’s canonical work, Still/Here (1994), a performance which featured a video score and set design by Bender, a live score of Bender’s largest work of “electronic theatre,” Total Recall (1987), performed by the original composer Stuart Argabright, exhibition tours, artist talks, film and video screenings, as well as facilitating an intimate collaborative dinner between Red Bull Arts New York and Topical Cream.

In June 2019, Poster House officially opened its doors at 119 W 23rd St, NYC, becoming the first museum in the United States dedicated exclusively to posters. Its inaugural exhibitions celebrated the legacy of Art Nouveau icon Alphonse Mucha, as well as the early 1990s graphic design pioneers Cyan.

In July 2018, United Talent Agency (UTA) opened its new gallery location in Beverly Hills designed by world-acclaimed Chinese artist and UTA client Ai Weiwei. The 1940s-built, 4,000-square-foot space on Foothill Road, once home to the West Coast Diamond Tool Company, opened with a group exhibition of works by Color Field painters.

Matthew Marks gallery is a New York institution and home to some of America's most distinguished artists, among them Jasper Johns, Charles Ray, Trisha Donnelly, Vija Celmins and Martin Puryear, and also represents the estates of Ellsworth Kelly and Ken Price. In managing its publicity, Cultural Counsel’s task is to ensure that the work shown there receives the thoughtful and high-profile coverage it deserves.

On the occasion of a show of new works by the legendary Jasper Johns, for example, Cultural Counsel coordinated a soulful interview that was featured on the cover of T: The New York Times Style Magazine.

Images courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery and T: The New York Times Style Magazine.

Cultural Counsel began its work with For Freedoms in July of 2018 until the end of the organization’s 50 State Initiative in November, 2018. A collaboration between artists, arts institutions, and active citizens who experiment with and produce new forms of civic action, the organization launched the 50 State Initiative, a series of programs and public art projects, including a nation-wide collection of artist-designed billboards, intended to encourage broad participation and conversation around the November 2018 midterm elections.

Cultural Counsel successfully secured an extensive amount of coverage across a wide range of publications, including The New York Times, BBC, CNN, Vanity Fair, Time Magazine, and Artforum. In total, Cultural Counsel secured more than 8.4 billion impressions for the campaign’s public art installations, exhibitions, and local community dialogues.

Felix LA is a new contemporary art fair and reflection of Los Angeles’s growing importance in the field. Its mission is to create a more intimate fair experience for collectors, dealers, and artists that prioritizes connoisseurship, collaboration, and community. Felix LA was co-founded by Dean Valentine along with brothers Al Morán and Mills Morán. A return to the hotel fair format, in the spirit of the storied Gramercy International Los Angeles at the Chateau Marmont, Felix LA grants galleries an efficient exhibition opportunity while offering the city’s burgeoning collector-base intimate access and maximum flexibility. The informal setting will allow for more extended conversations among collectors, dealers, and artists alike. The first edition of Felix LA will take place from February 14-17, 2019 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.